"Mobile is having a profound impact on the way companies engage their target audience," said Gutmans. "As a result, businesses are applying significant pressures on development leaders to rethink their mobile approach, and to implement a flexible set of mobile back-end services. Our goal is to deliver the best and most productive approach for development leaders to rapidly meet this requirement for the next generation of mobile applications."

Mobile is Crucial for the Enterprise

The creation of mobile apps is already a top priority for businesses. In the next three years, "mobile app development projects will outnumber native PC projects by a ratio of 4-to-1," Forbes reports [1]. With an estimated 7.4 billion mobile devices in the world by 2015 [2], enterprises must also contend with huge internal and external user bases.

Mobile First: The New Standard for Apps

Companies must adopt a "mobile first" strategy that addresses the realities of modern enterprise app development:

Composite applications are the rule. Today's apps need to combine the context of an individual (including what only a mobile device knows about its user, such as geographic location), with personalized input from multiple corporate back-end systems (including corporate software that is provided as a cloud service), along with potential information from social platforms. This type of composite architecture with a server-side mobile back-end, and UI on the mobile client side), best lends itself to an API-centric cloud services architecture.

Interface design with mobile in mind. User Interface design must now be centered on the sensory and tactile elements of mobile devices, versus focusing on input being primarily through mouse and keyboard. However, supporting the desired client experience on multiple native device environments, from testing to deployment and management, has become increasingly challenging and complex. Many enterprises cannot afford to support the complexity of a plethora of different devices. There are huge benefits to adopting an open web standards based client side interface (Javascript or HTML5), extended to support access to the native device capabilities of a mobile device.

Users are an essential part of the design process. A company can't truly refine its mobile user experience until the app is in the hands of its users. It is essential for a company to deliver incremental updates in an agile, highly iterative, yet high-quality fashion. This places even further pressure on already strained relationships between developer and operations teams. Development tooling and application management capabilities that enable real-time insights and collaboration between these teams are essential. For example, when it comes to troubleshooting application issues in real time, companies need application platforms that enable both sides to be looking at the same information.

Cloud and Mobile are Interdependent

It has become clear that the back-end of mobile apps will predominantly run on the cloud due to the nature of composite applications pulling data from multiple sources, the agile development requirements of a mobile first approach, and the elasticity required to meet fluctuating demand caused by the volume of mobile devices.

"We believe the combination of open web technologies on the client (such as JavaScript and HTML5), along with PHP, the most popular language for server-side development in the cloud, can unify and create a leap forward in simplifying mobile application development," said Gutmans. "Zend is delivering the end-to-end tooling, framework components, and runtime and management capabilities to help clients build a new type of cloud–connected mobile application in a simpler and speedier way."

CIO, CTO & Developer Resources

PHP is already being chosen extensively for cloud and mobile applications. A recent survey of over 3,000 developers [3], found that 63 percent are already deploying apps to the cloud. In addition, a recent UBM survey of enterprise technology decision makers [4] found that 60 percent of PHP applications are being developed for business-critical purposes. Rapid speed of development, ease of working in the cloud, fast ramp-up time for new developers, and performance were among the top reasons IT decision makers choose PHP over other languages.

Zend's End-to-End Mobile Application Solution

Drag and drop cloud service creation. Zend Studio enables developers to visually assemble complex cloud services (APIs), and connect them to client side code in a simple manner. This visual tooling is built to take advantage of Zend Server Gateway, a new component Zend is releasing in beta form, which provides mobile back-end capabilities including cloud service authentication, filtering, validation and the execution of business logic.

Elastic, fault tolerant cloud application platform. A new generation of Zend Server, the #1 commercial PHP application platform, provides a fault-tolerant, scalable environment for the mobile back-end. Zend Server subscribers also receive full support for Zend Server Gateway as part of their subscription. In addition, Zend Server offers visibility across development and operations teams to application performance and errors, streamlining collaboration. Zend Server is supported on many public and private cloud environments including Amazon, RackSpace, VMware, IBM and Red Hat OpenShift.

Simple graphical mobile interface development. A new version of Zend Studio, the leading IDE used by PHP developers, will now include WYSIWYG capabilities that enable a developer to put together mobile application interface prototypes in hours that would have taken days to develop manually. This visual drag-and-drop approach generates standard HTML5 and jQuery Mobile output that can be easily modified and extended. In addition, Zend has tightly integrated Apache Cordova which enables access to native device capabilities and packaging apps once developed for distribution on the various app stores.

"Frustrated by the need to build and test native applications on a per platform and per device basis, many enterprises are revisiting web based, cross-platform alternatives that draw on cloud based services," said Stephen O'Grady, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. "With its mobile capable tools, Zend intends to provide enterprise PHP developers a means to develop next generation mobile applications."

Zend partners with businesses to rapidly deliver modern apps across mobile and cloud. Founded in 1999, Zend helped establish the PHP language, which today runs more than one-third of the world's Web sites. Today, Zend is the leading provider of software and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical applications in PHP. Zend's award-winning PHP solutions including Zend Server and Zend Studio are deployed at more than 40,000 companies, including NYSE Euronext, BNP Paribas, Bell Helicopter, France Telecom and other leading brands worldwide. Learn more at www.zend.com.

Sources

[1] Forbes, "The Latest Infographics: Mobile Business Statistics for 2012," May 2012. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/markfidelman/2012/05/02/the-latest-infographics-mobile-business-statistics-for-2012/>

Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized digital expert, bestselling book author, frequent keynote speaker, analyst, futurist, and transformation expert based in Washington, DC. He is currently Chief Strategy Officer at the industry-leading digital strategy and online community solutions firm, 7Summits.

Digital Transformation is much more than a buzzword. The radical shift to digital mechanisms for almost every process is evident across all industries and verticals. This is often especially true in financial services, where the legacy environment is many times unable to keep up with the rapidly shifting demands of the consumer. The constant pressure to provide complete, omnichannel delivery of customer-facing solutions to meet both regulatory and customer demands is putting enormous pressure on...

IoT is rapidly becoming mainstream as more and more investments are made into the platforms and technology. As this movement continues to expand and gain momentum it creates a massive wall of noise that can be difficult to sift through. Unfortunately, this inevitably makes IoT less approachable for people to get started with and can hamper efforts to integrate this key technology into your own portfolio. There are so many connected products already in place today with many hundreds more on the h...

The standardization of container runtimes and images has sparked the creation of an almost overwhelming number of new open source projects that build on and otherwise work with these specifications. Of course, there's Kubernetes, which orchestrates and manages collections of containers. It was one of the first and best-known examples of projects that make containers truly useful for production use. However, more recently, the container ecosystem has truly exploded. A service mesh like Istio addr...

Charles Araujo is an industry analyst, internationally recognized authority on the Digital Enterprise and author of The Quantum Age of IT: Why Everything You Know About IT is About to Change. As Principal Analyst with Intellyx, he writes, speaks and advises organizations on how to navigate through this time of disruption. He is also the founder of The Institute for Digital Transformation and a sought after keynote speaker. He has been a regular contributor to both InformationWeek and CIO Insight...

Andrew Keys is Co-Founder of ConsenSys Enterprise. He comes to ConsenSys Enterprise with capital markets, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, he worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was responsible for the creation and distribution of life settlement products to hedge funds and investment banks. After, he co-founded a revenue cycle management company where he learned about Bitcoin and eventually Ethereal. Andrew's role at ConsenSys Enterprise is a mul...

To Really Work for Enterprises, MultiCloud Adoption Requires Far Better and Inclusive Cloud Monitoring and Cost Management … But How? Overwhelmingly, even as enterprises have adopted cloud computing and are expanding to multi-cloud computing, IT leaders remain concerned about how to monitor, manage and control costs across hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. It’s clear that traditional IT monitoring and management approaches, designed after all for on-premises data centers, are falling short in ...

In his general session at 19th Cloud Expo, Manish Dixit, VP of Product and Engineering at Dice, discussed how Dice leverages data insights and tools to help both tech professionals and recruiters better understand how skills relate to each other and which skills are in high demand using interactive visualizations and salary indicator tools to maximize earning potential.
Manish Dixit is VP of Product and Engineering at Dice. As the leader of the Product, Engineering and Data Sciences team at D...

Dynatrace is an application performance management software company with products for the information technology departments and digital business owners of medium and large businesses. Building the Future of Monitoring with Artificial Intelligence. Today we can collect lots and lots of performance data. We build beautiful dashboards and even have fancy query languages to access and transform the data. Still performance data is a secret language only a couple of people understand. The more busine...

Isomorphic Software is the global leader in high-end, web-based business applications. We develop, market, and support the SmartClient & Smart GWT HTML5/Ajax platform, combining the productivity and performance of traditional desktop software with the simplicity and reach of the open web.
With staff in 10 timezones, Isomorphic provides a global network of services related to our technology, with offerings ranging from turnkey application development to SLA-backed enterprise support.
Leading global enterprises use Isomorphic technology to reduce costs and improve productivity, developing ...

Concerns about security, downtime and latency, budgets, and general unfamiliarity with cloud technologies continue to create hesitation for many organizations that truly need to be developing a cloud strategy. Hybrid cloud solutions are helping to elevate those concerns by enabling the combination or orchestration of two or more platforms, including on-premise infrastructure, private clouds and/or third-party, public cloud services. This gives organizations more comfort to begin their digital transformation without a complete overhaul of their existing infrastructure - serving as a sort of "mi...

Dion Hinchcliffe is an internationally recognized digital expert, bestselling book author, frequent keynote speaker, analyst, futurist, and transformation expert based in Washington, DC. He is currently Chief Strategy Officer at the industry-leading digital strategy and online community solutions firm, 7Summits.

Digital Transformation is much more than a buzzword. The radical shift to digital mechanisms for almost every process is evident across all industries and verticals. This is often especially true in financial services, where the legacy environment is many times unable to keep up with the rapidly shifting demands of the consumer. The constant pressure to provide complete, omnichannel delivery of customer-facing solutions to meet both regulatory and customer demands is putting enormous pressure on organizations of all sizes and in every line of business. Fintech is a constant battleground for th...

FinTech Is Now Part of the CloudEXPO New York Program. Financial enterprises in New York City, London, Singapore, and other world financial capitals are embracing a new generation of smart, automated FinTech that eliminates many cumbersome, slow, and expensive intermediate processes from their businesses. Accordingly, attendees at the upcoming 22nd CloudEXPO | DXWorldEXPO November 12-13, 2018 in New York City will find fresh new content in two new tracks called: FinTechEXPO New York Blockchain Event which will incorporate FinTech and Blockchain, as well as machine learning, artificial intellig...

Today we introduced our New York & Silicon Valley combo sponsorship and exhibit opportunities with unmatched pre and post-show promotion.
At CloudEXPO | DevOpsSUMMIT | DXWorldEXPO NY & CA, Digital Transformation (DX) is a major focus with the introduction of DXWorldEXPO within the program. Successful transformation requires a laser focus on being data-driven and on using all the tools available that enable transformation if they plan to survive over the long term.
A total of 88% of Fortune 500 companies from a generation ago are now out of business. Only 12% still survive. Similar percen...

Automation is turning manual or repetitive IT tasks into a thing of the past-including in the datacenter. Nutanix not only provides a world-class user interface, but also a comprehensive set of APIs to allow the automation of provisioning, data collection, and other tasks. In this session, you'll explore Nutanix APIs-from provisioning to other Day 0, Day 1 operations. Come learn about how you can easily leverage Nutanix APIs for orchestration and automation of infrastructure, VMs, networking, and even backup/DR. We'll review available APIs and conduct live demonstrations of integrations and th...

Enterprises are striving to become digital businesses for differentiated innovation and customer-centricity. Traditionally, they focused on digitizing processes and paper workflow. To be a disruptor and compete against new players, they need to gain insight into business data and innovate at scale. Cloud and cognitive technologies can help them leverage hidden data in SAP/ERP systems to fuel their businesses to accelerate digital transformation success.

Digital Transformation: Preparing Cloud & IoT Security for the Age of Artificial Intelligence. As automation and artificial intelligence (AI) power solution development and delivery, many businesses need to build backend cloud capabilities. Well-poised organizations, marketing smart devices with AI and BlockChain capabilities prepare to refine compliance and regulatory capabilities in 2018. Volumes of health, financial, technical and privacy data, along with tightening compliance requirements by FTC, CUI/DFARS, EU-GDPR and the underlying National Cybersecurity Framework suggest the need for a ...

We are in a digital age however when one looks for their dream home, the mortgage process can take as long as 60 days to complete. Not what we expect in a time where processes are known to take place swiftly and seamlessly. Mortgages businesses are facing the heat and are in immediate need of upgrading their operating model to reduce costs, decrease the processing time and enhance the customer experience. Therefore, providers are exploring multiple ways of tapping emerging technologies to solve this industry problem. During this session, Chander Damodaran, Chief Blockchain Architect at Brillio...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.